Submarine selection process a disaster in the making

The process to select our new submarines announced on Friday by the Defence Minister is completely inadequate. If it sticks to it, the government will choose our new submarines without having nearly enough information to make the decision properly.

And it will be setting up our biggest defence procurement disaster ever. That is because the three contenders – Japan, Germany and France – have been given only 10 months to design the boat, decide how and where to build it, and come up with a price.

These are all immensely complex tasks, and 10 months is simply not long enough to take them beyond the back-of-the-envelope stage, and provide answers on which the government can rely.

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